1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of search engines, and particularly to a real-time search engine of financial information.
2. Description of Related Art
Access to financial information has become increasingly time-critical as various technologies mature. Satellites, high-speed computers, wireless devices, and the Internet paved the way for financial world to connect seamlessly through landlines or via wireless transmissions. The inevitable scrutiny, sophistication, and attention in processing and analyzing financial information are evident as expected methods of doing business inventions increase dramatically in the years ahead.
Existing tools in searching financial information analyze delayed or historical data. A user submits a query containing one or more security symbols with a search criterion to obtain stock quotes and news. For example, institutional bankers and individual investors in trading systems analyze performance of securities by defining queries to obtain a set of financial data, such as a list of ten leading percentage gainers or a security that surpasses a 200 day moving average. However, the queries in these search results produce, at best, delays in several minutes. The main obstacle is the large storage capacity required to store all the exchange updates, which is about 4 million updates a day. With each update requiring 100 bytes of storage space, a substantial search time is necessary to search through 400 Mbytes of storage space for the 4 million updates. In an ever-fast moving financial market, such delays can translate to miss opportunities or significant economic losses.
Accordingly, it is desirable to have a real-time search engine of financial information for generating real-time financial analysis to institutional or individual investors.